Symbolism in the Doctor Who episode "Amy's Choice" · 1:01am Oct 18th, 2014
A good Doctor Who plot has two plots. One is the Doctor saving the world. Another is helping somebody (possibly the Doctor) deal with some personal problem. Ideally, these two plots should connect.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
At the start of the episode, Amy is engaged to marry Rory, but still finds herself attracted to the Doctor. Then a mysterious “Dream Lord” springs a trap for the Doctor, forcing Amy, Rory, and the Doctor to move back and forth between two realities. In one, the Doctor is visiting Amy and Rory, who have been married a long time and are having a baby; they are all chased by murderous old people. In the other, Amy and Rory are travelling with the Doctor, but they’re all trapped in a TARDIS drained of power and are slowly freezing to death. Each time they wake up in one reality, they feel convinced that it is the real world, and the other is a dream. But time passes in the other reality while they aren’t in it, and they don’t have enough time to escape the threats in both realities. The Dream Lord tells them that they must choose which reality is real, and kill themselves in the one that is a dream. For reasons I no longer remember, Amy must be the one who chooses which of these worlds is real.
Of course the worlds also symbolize the two men she feels she needs to choose between. And her choice ends up depending not on reasoning out which world is real, but realizing which man she wants to be with (Rory). (There’s a crossed circuit in the symbolism, because she has to choose the Doctor's world rather than Rory's world in order to be with Rory, who was killed in Rory's world. He should have been killed in the Doctor's world if they wanted to keep that symbolism straight. Though they way they did it still worked.)
After she chooses, and they kill themselves in Rory’s world, the Doctor kills them all in the Doctor’s world--and they wake up back on the TARDIS. The Doctor explains how he figured out that …
… wait for it…
… both of the worlds Amy thought she had to choose between were just dreams.
Whoa. See how that fits with the symbolism?
In Rory-world, the danger was old people. In Doctor-world, the danger was freezing to death. Almost as if she were afraid of growing old and boring with Rory, and afraid of a cold life with the Doctor, who did not love her.
So Amy has now resolved to marry Rory, but has also learned that both of the futures she imagined she was choosing between--as well as her greatest fears about those futures--were all just dreams, which may or may not happen regardless of her choice.
Thus, this episode has one adventure plot-line and one love-life plot-line, and they are unified completely by the end. But which came first: The adventure plot, or the love plot?
In this case, we know: The love plot came first, according to Wikipedia.. And that doesn’t surprise me. Everything came back to Amy’s love quandary. It would have been amazingly good luck if a random adventure story had all that fall out of it in the second draft. It can happen, but not reliably.
(Bonus: There’s a third plot line in this episode: Who is the Dream Lord? The answer to that tells you a lot about the Doctor.)
NOTE: I'm linking to this post from the Story & Episode Annotations & Analysis group, which everybody seems to have forgotten about.
One of my favorite Matt Smith episodes.
That and the Vincent Van Gogh one.
Ah man, I need to catch up on this show. I just watched the 50th anniversary episode last week after skipping a bunch. But this episode is one of the ones I've seen.
I haven't seen this episode, but I like the cleverness of it.
And while I feel that most people probably won't get the reference, it reminds me of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (at least the paraphrasing the movie does of the novel), where Tomas relates his reason for choosing one lover over another: "If I had two lives... I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once..."
Amy, however, holds both opposing ideas in her head, suffers the conflict over them both, sees them both together. I'm honestly not sure if being saved by the one whom she would likely be with in a perfect world where he (The Doctor) loved her as she wanted is a true benefit for her. Based on what you've related, it seems like she simply has to settle for 'second-best' because Best Doctor is only there to break the tie by ruling himself out as he usually does.
Aside from that, lots of interesting tension in this episode, apparently.
Note, I joined the group and would love to see it become active. Maybe when the next season starts?
Doctor Who gets it right every now and again. Though it's not entirely surprising Moffat doesn't have his hands in it when it does turn out right ...
Interestingly enough, "Blink", probably one of the best episodes, contains neither of those two plots.
2540023 Season 8, with the new Doctor, has been consistently amazing. You should get on it.
I don't recall being terribly excited by that episode. Mostly I just liked the Dream Lord being played by what's-his-name.
The Dream Lord sold me hard on this episode, because as much as I enjoy the interplay between Amy/Rory/Eleven, and as much as I enjoy seeing people solve puzzles, I like the thought that the most potentially dangerous thing in the TARDIS is the Doctor's own buried self..
I think it's very telling that the DL specifically got the boys away from Amy in the TARDIS and not the other way around, and that Rory dies shortly after in the choose-Rory reality. The message I take from this? "Not only is your husband a fragile little chunk of flesh, but I'm the sort of thing that'd kill him if I were truly motivated. Do you really want my attentions that badly?"
When the Doctor's subconscious gets a chance to show someone his most petty, selfish inner self, it definitely doesn't disappoint.
I've had some very good experiences with Twelve so far myself, to echo what others mentioned (IIRC) in other comments. I can only hope they go fearlessly into exploring the dark.